`I will look into the ink-pools - I will faithfully guard the jewels! Oh, my Father and my Mother, send him away!' He indicated Kim with a backward jerk of his bare heel.
`Not yet - not yet. In a little while he will go away again. But now he is at school - at a new madrissah and thou shalt be his teacher. Play the Play of the Jewels against him. I will keep tally.'
The child dried his tears at once, and dashed to the back of the shop, whence he returned with a copper tray.
`Give me!' he said to Lurgan Sahib. `Let them come from thy hand, for he may say that I knew them before.'
`Gently - gently,' the man replied, and from a drawer under the table dealt a half-handful of clattering trifles into the tray.
`Now,' said the child, waving an old newspaper. `Look on them as long as thou wilt, stranger. Count and, if need be, handle. One look is enough for me.' He turned his back proudly.
`But what is the game?'
`When thou hast counted and handled and art sure that thou canst remember them all, I cover them with this paper, and thou must tell over the tally to Lurgan Sahib. I will write mine.'
`Oah!' The instinct of competition waked in his breast. He bent over the tray. There were but fifteen stones on it. `That is easy,' he said after a minute. The child slipped the paper over the winking jewels and scribbled in a native account-book.
`There are under that paper five blue stones - one big, one smaller, and three small,' said Kim, all in haste. `There are four green stones, and one with a hole in it; there is one yellow stone that I can see through, and one like a pipe-stem. There are two red stones, and - and - I made the count fifteen, but two I have forgotten. No! Give me time. One was of ivory, little and brownish; and - and - give me time... '
`One - two' - Lurgan Sahib counted him out up to ten. Kim shook his head.
`Hear my count!' the child burst in, trilling with laughter. `First, are two flawed sapphires - one of two ruttees and one of four as I should judge. The four-ruttee sapphire is chipped at the edge. There is one Turkestan turquoise, plain with black veins, and there are two inscribed - one with a Name of God in gilt, and the other being cracked across, for it came out of an old ring, I cannot read. We have now all five blue stones. Four flawed emeralds there are, but one is drilled in two places, and one is a little carven - '
`Their weights?' said Lurgan Sahib impassively.
`Three - five - five - and four ruttees as I judge it. There is one piece of old greenish pipe amber, and a cut topaz from Europe. There is one ruby of Burma, of two ruttees, without a flaw, and there is a balas- ruby, flawed, of two ruttees. There is a carved ivory from China representing a rat sucking an egg; and there is last-ah ha!-a ball of crystal as big as a bean set on a gold leaf.'
He clapped his hands at the close.
`He is thy master,' said Lurgan Sahib, smiling.
`Huh! He knew the names of the stones,' said Kim, flushing. `Try again! With common things such as he and I both know.'